His wife, all 195 pounds of her.
Arvel put a cheek near her lips, making sure she was still breathing. He looked at the back door, where he'd seen the flicker of movement as he'd entered the room. He was almost sure it was some kind of animal, and he had been getting ready for a closer look when he saw Betsy laid out like Sly Stallone in Rocky, only Sly had managed to climb up the ropes and lose on his feet and Betsy appeared down for the count.
She was still drawing air, but her eyes were hollow and sunken. He lifted one eyelid, just the way Henrietta would do. Betsy's pupil was as tight as a BB. Her long skirt bunched around her knees, showing the purple road map of her varicose veins. Arvel felt the back of her head and found a raised place the size of a banty egg.
"You just got a little concussion, is all," Henrietta would say. She spoke in that slow, reassuring way even when the patients were unconscious. Once Arvel had heard her waltz a car crash victim through death's door with that same kind of talk.
Arvel didn't think he could pretend to be Henrietta anymore, because he wondered what would happen if his wife stopped breathing. "Don't die on me, now," he said, a line Henrietta would never use in a hundred years.
He went for the phone and dialed 911 with no problem, then found himself talking to the communications officer in Henrietta's words. "Is this Francine?"
Of course it was Francine, because Arvel knew all the communications folks from the scanner he kept in his truck. When Francine said "Yes, go ahead" Arvel took a deep breath and said "Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you could have the squad come down to 12 Hogwood Road in Solom. I've got a patient down."
"What's the emergency, sir?"
"I'm not no sir. I'm Henrietta. I mean, this is Arvel Ward." Somewhere in his glove box, he had a sheet with all the emergency response codes, but since his job was putting out fires or occasionally directing traffic, he'd never bothered to memorize the list. All he knew was that, in car wrecks, "PI" meant "personal injury" and "PD" meant "property damage," and you hurried with the red light and siren for the first but not the second. So he said "We got a PI here, weak pulse, possible head injury. Plus something's burning in the oven."
"Hold on, Arvel, we'll get somebody right there. Are you with the patient?"
"Not right now. I'm on the phone."
"I meant, is the patient in the house with you?"
"Yeah. She lives here."
"Okay, stay on the phone and let me give you some instructions."
"I can't leave her alone, and the cord won't reach. Tell them to hurry, and send Henrietta."
Arvel hung up. When he got back to the kitchen, he knelt over her again to check her pulse. The hand he placed on the opposite side of her body touched a wet place on the floor. He lifted his hand and saw it was blood leaking from somewhere just above her waist.
Arvel wondered if maybe Betsy had landed on a butcher knife when she fell, because it surely wasn't her head giving off that much blood. He tried to roll her over but she was too heavy. Finally, he lifted her enough to see a rip in her dress and the burgundy maw of a wound in her side, a few inches below her rib cage. It looked like some kind of bite mark, because the edges of the wound were stringy and jagged.
He looked once more at the back door, wondering what kind of beast had wandered in and taken a chunk out of his wife. And wondering why Digger hadn't raised holy hell, and if Henrietta would know how to handle something like this. Because, right now, with Henrietta's voice in his head or not, he couldn't think of a single comforting thing to say.
Jett dropped her book bag on the floor and dove onto her bed. Her heart was racing, as it always did when she was stoned. Pot was a stimulant, and the textbooks classified it somewhere between a narcotic and a hallucinogenic. It didn't make you hallucinate like acid did, but she'd never known acid to trick you into thinking you'd had a battle of wits with a goat. She swore to herself she wouldn't get stoned ever again. At least not until after Mom and Gordon went to sleep.
She was just kicking off her shoes when she heard the pounding on her door. "Jett?"
Great. It was Gordon. Just the thing to kill a good buzz. "Yeah?"
The door handle turned. Gordon must have decided to treat her with some respect, though, because he let go of the handle and said, "Can I come in?"
"Just a sec. Let me get dressed." She got up, threw a book and some paper on her desk, and slouched into her chair. She hooked headphones around her neck and punched up some Nine Inch Nails, just to piss off Gordon, though she preferred Robyn Hitchcock when she was stoned. No time for the Visine in her desk drawer. She'd just have to bluff it out.
"Come on in, it's unlocked" she said, deciding not to call him on his turning of the knob before she'd invited him in.
Gordon walked in as if he were a professor and Jett's bedroom were the classroom. Lecture time. "Why aren't you helping your mom with supper?"
"I have homework." She nodded at the book on her desk.
"Oh." He looked around, as if he'd never seen the room before. His eyes stopped on the movie poster of a gaunt and pale Brandon Lee from The Crow. "We haven't had time to get to know each other, Jett. It's important for me that we get along. Important for both of us, I think. It will make things easier on your mother."
"Mom's been kind of weird lately."
"She's trying hard to make this work." Gordon acted like he wanted to sit down, but her bed was the only suitable surface in the room besides the floor, and Jett couldn't picture him sitting on either of those. He fingered the knot of his tie. "I think we ought to have a father-to-daughter talk."
She opened her mouth but he held up his hand to cut her off. "I meant that as a figure of speech. I don't want to replace your real father. But we do live under the same roof and we need to lay out some ground rules."
"Besides the 'no drugs' thing."
"That's for everybody's peace of mind especially yours. We have high aspirations for you, Jett. I never thought I'd have somebody to carry on the Smith tradition."
"But I'm not a Smith." Jett wondered if Gordon was stoned on something himself, because he was making less sense than she was. From the way he hovered over her, she could see straight up his nose to the black, wiry hairs inside.
"We're still a family. I know things have been a little rough on you, having to make new friends and acclimate yourself to this old farmhouse. It's a major transition from Charlotte to Solom."
"Yeah, they don't have no goats grazing along Independence Boulevard."
Gordon's lips quavered as if he were trying to smile and failing. "That's 'any' goats."
"Any goats. Like, what's their deal?"
"Deal?"
"Your goats act like they own the place. I know they're supposed to be stubborn, but they're kind of creepy."
"They're more pets than anything. They won't hurt you."
Maybe they won't hurt you. But you're part of this place. Maybe they think I'm some kind of alien freak, come in from the outside world to threaten their way of life.
As soon as the thought arose, Jett dismissed it as silly. The goats were weird, that was for sure, but they were just shaggy, cloven-hoofed, goofy-eyed animals when you got right down to it. Nothing to be afraid of. Even if they ate your dope and looked at you as if you were a germ under a microscope.
"Your eyes are bloodshot," Gordon said, sniffing the air and causing his nostril hairs to quiver.
"Yeah. I'm not sleeping very well."
"I thought you'd be settled in by now."
"Bad dreams. There's this man in a black hat who-"
Gordon took an abrupt step backward and accidentally kicked her backpack with his heel. The zippered section was open, revealing the dull glint of her pot Baggie. She expected Gordon to give it a once-over, but he regained his balance and said in a near whisper, "A man in a black hat?"